or I’m trying to anyway.

I haven’t taken the dog for another run because every run is rainy these days and I’m regularly surprised about making it through a normal day without breaking my own neck: add running, rain, and dog to the mix and I figure I’d just be tempting fate.

So…happy about the runs. Angry as hell about the plateau (better be TOM). Craving all things carb, but especially chocolate.

Maybe it’s stress? Have I heard this somewhere before? I’m majorly stressing the last two weeks and have more planned for the next two until I can get some work out the door…maybe long days in the office, long nights working at home, more/less constant indigestion, and stress are all making me hold on to the weight?

Or what I’m doing’s not working. Yeah, it’s probably that last thing.

Hope your week went better and your weekend is fun, but temptation free.

Does it count if it was unintentional and the miles were spread out over a 12-hour period?

My guess is, no. Doesn’t count. Nice try, though.

Ran/walked my two miles in the morning. The bike pants (really, quite long) worked pretty well under sweats, but add to that my jacket that I use to carry my iphone (gps run tracker, music, 9-11 when I pass out on the road), a t-shirt, and a sports bra and I was pretty dern toasty towards the end there. Figuring out the i-phone issue tonight so I can leave the jacket behind…although if the weather turns.

And then tonight while hubby was at choir practice I figured I’d see how the dog might do on a one-mile run/walk. Answer: not too bad. He slowed me down by about a minute, but then maybe it wasn’t him so much as me tired after a long day. Hubby said the dog gets very upset when I’ve gone out to run these past 3 times, so I thought maybe I’d bring him along for the 1 mile runs twice a week. He’s good, distracting, company.

So I ran/walked 3.24 miles in 50 minutes today. Not exactly fast, but faster than slow. I think my goal is to get my run tracker to call these little adventures “runs” rather than “walks.” I think of them as runs, and my lungs, sore legs, and aching back think of them as runs. Why won’t the technology do me the honor of calling them runs even if they’re pathetically slow ones?

The two pounds I gained last week are gone again and good riddance. Now to add a two-pound loss onto next week to make up for it.

I did a 1-mile run/walk yesterday in the pouring down rain. But I think I’ve decided I never learned to run when I was running on the treadmill, so nothing was going to keep me from hitting the very wet open roads.

Sounds so romantic, doesn’t it? Open roads, pouring down rain, the lone determined runner. Ha! Picture damp and squishy shoes, soaking wet head, fogged up glasses, red and patchy red face, huffing and puffing, oh, and chafing, lots and lots of chafing. I’ll never make it on a Nike billboard, that’s for certain.

Tomorrow’s a 2-mile run. Solving the chafing problem with truly unattractive biking shorts under my sweats. I will be, once again, a dreadful spectacle roaming the neighborhood. But just the thought of making myself do a run, get stronger, increase my speed and stamina, makes me happy.

So maybe I didn’t just break even this week. I know many of you have said this before, and maybe I have as well, but there are more measures of progress than pounds lost. This week so far I’ve had a 4-mile run/walk gain. And that’s not bad at all!

I’m finally seeing new movement on the weight tracker to the right, which means I’ve caught up to and slightly surpassed where I was in the summer. Phew!

Now with full-on atkins living, I’m losing about 1.2 pds one week and 2 the following. So…3.2 every two weeks or 6.4 every month. It’s a lot slower than I’d like, but it’s fast enough that I can see and feel the progress.

Next week will be a milestone for me: 20 pounds lost from my record heaviest (last fall). 20 pounds in a year…also not a huge loss, but gosh I’m glad to report a 20 pound loss this year rather than a 20 pound gain!

So, slow and steady old chums! I might not get there tomorrow, but I’m on the right path now at least!